Sun Conjunct Pluto

Not a criminal or axe murderer in sight unless the woman in the post office is leading a double life, and she certainly didn't exert unreasonable power over me, just took the envelope marked Media Mail and charged me $2.38. (She's the one who endeared herself to me the last time I was there by asking as I was leaving if she'd already asked me if I needed stamps - scarcely someone to be wary of.)

So - a totally innocuous manifestation but perhaps Venus square Uranus on the same day toned it down a bit.

Mars Trine Mars Part II

So if what I was supposed to do yesterday was take the initiative and start a new project, I was successful. According to astrodienst, I was "most strongly motivated toward tasks that bring credit" to me and express me as an individual, and while I haven't noticed too much credit coming my way so far there are probably not too many landscaping (read keep the deer out) projects that involve cast iron head and foot boards and a broken metal screen bought for $1 from that room at Ikea near the checkout counters where they have all the damaged stuff they can't sell for full price.

True to my usual extravagant purchasing style when buying anything other than plants, I'd bought only one can of Hunter Green Hammered Rust-O-Leum when *planning* this project, and that ran out before the two bits of the screen were painted and ready to be made useable by joining them together with a stretch of wire netting, a solution that's taken me six years to come up with.

First order of business today after I've rewritten the last scene of Just For You, printed out two copies and mailed them off ha ha is a trip to Ace, and with Sun conjunct Pluto and Venus square Uranus I might just manage to get Serious Deer Barrier #1 in place before the sun goes down. Or not.

Mars Trine Mars Part I

So last night when I get back from ABQ I check out astrodienst, see this will be the aspect du jour today and consider it auspicious for the one thing I am telling myself I would really like to get done today - print out a couple of copies of Just For You and get them in the mail.

Note I say "the one thing I am telling myself I would really like to get done today." None of this intention or goal stuff for me, not with natal Mars in the oh-so-energetic sign of Pisces, even it is being trined today by transiting Mars in Cancer in the Third, chart sector of information and communication (and of course short distances and neighbors and in-laws and a lot of other things I hope not to have to bother with today).

I've been awake for exactly four hours, since 6:00 am, and what you see here is as far as I've gotten so far towards the thing I'm telling myself I would really like to get done today - writing down that I'd like to do it.

One of the things I have done - (as well as, among many other things, wander around outside and do some weeding, torture the Silver Lace Vine to get it to go where I want it to go and not where it wants to go, clean out the litter boxes, read an article on storage solutions in a March 2003 edition of This Old House that I've just found, spray on old iron headboard with Hunter Green Rust-O-Leum (don't ask), take all the plants out of the kitchen window box in the probably deluded hope that I'm going to climb into the sink to clean the window later in the day and decide I want to take a course in Spanish at WNMU) - is divide the number of days in the year so far by the number of posts I've made on here to see just how *accurate* the name of this blog is.

Pardon my cliche, but to my surprise the result is 2.40, which means I can leave the name as it is and not have to change it to Whenever-I-Feel-Like-Writing-A-Post-Astrology, which has been my MO since I began it. And now that this has brought my day to year posting ratio down to 2.37, it's time to check my Apple stock again and wipe the spiders' nests out of the corner of the kitchen window.

to be continued

Jupiter Conjunct Saturn

Confront my own inhibitions and self-restrictions, as well as the restrictions placed upon me by circumstances?

How about wish this paralyzing grand trine in water we are all being treated to right now which also involves my natal Saturn hurries up and passes so I am capable of  DOING something?

Jupiter Square Neptune

So after barely watching YouTube after my six-month sojourn sleeping on the floor in Cambridge last year when I did nothing but watch films noirs night after night, suddenly I discover The Barchester Chronicles and lose myself in period drama *of the highest order* - Donald Pleasence, Alan Rickman, Nigel Hawthorne as I've never seen him, Susan Hampshire and the one and only Geraldine McEwan as the first wife of Hyacinth Bucket's Richard of Keeping Up Appearances (look them up yourself) - all comporting themselves in exquisite costumes in a green and pleasant England where the sun always shines and the lower classes know their place down to the last correct missing haitch - who could ask for anything more?

Not me, now that I'm done with Barchester and working my way through He Knew He Was Right, not quite as compelling but compelling enough to keep me in bed all day yesterday watching it  while Neptune cooperated fully and kept a soft and gentle rain falling, slowly turning the parched and barren land a spring-like green and - blimey, it's a very good thing Saturn's about to enter the picture and git me off to git my railings cleaned. More soon.

Sun Square Sun

Blimey, read the astrodienst interpretation for this and you'll pull the covers over your head and stay in bed all day - "a time of challenge and crisis.....occurs in the form of persons working at cross-purposes to your efforts....you may be very angry at these people.....challenges in connection with your efforts to build something up..." - sheesh!

I thought it was supposed to be more to do with it being three (or nine) months since your birthday and you *should* be looking at your goals (hah!) for the year and seeing how far you'd gone towards accomplishing them.

Whichever, a Sun sextile Jupiter following on the heels of the square must have somehow shoved me into printing out a photo I took in June of Star Child wearing a dress a friend of mine bought for her two years ago and sticking it an envelope for said friend with a note saying thank you for the book she sent me this past Christmas.

I also managed to parcel up the eight-gore embroidered coral colored Ghost skirt I bought on eBay.uk and had shipped to my sister without telling her (I did tell her but she didn't read the email) so that when it arrived she thought her fairy godmother had sent her a present, put it on immediately and waltzed off to asda (England's Walmart) in it, only to be told by her daughter not to be so stupid and of course it wasn't for her, read the packing slip.

That was two years ago and I've been meaning to send it back to her ever since as she's much taller than me and it looks much better on her, and on top of packing that up for the post office I sent another printed out photo and a child's dress I was going to put on eBay to someone else as yet another belated thank you but that one's too complicated to even go near explaining.

That made three things I managed to get done - pitiful by many people's standards, I know, but I can only compare myself to myself blah blah blah and it's a good day if I cross one item off a list these days - and bearing astrodienst's warning in mind, I wondered exactly what I might meet at the post office where any transaction involving another country seems to cause consternation and stress and learning new software to the counter person and takes at least twenty minutes, and thank God I'm where I am and not New York or the people in line behind me would riot.

Imagine my surprise, then, dear reader, when all went smoothly - I put the letter in the right slot in the lobby and the woman who dealt with the packages was unfazed and civil with not a challenge or crisis in sight.

Au contraire, as a matter of fact, as she endeared herself to me as a kindred spirit by saying as she gave me the receipt "Have I already asked you if you need stamps?"

astrodienst nil, me three.

Retrograde Mercury in the Third

So Mercury is retrograde in the third conjunct the Sun no less, and I'm trying hard to deal with the mass of old letters, photographs (fifty years' worth), postcards written and unwritten and all the other *stuff* I shipped back or brought back from Cambridge when the locker got emptied (Yeah! No fifty dollar fee this month!).

The photos are the most intimidating task as I've decided I need to send the ones of other people on to the other people concerned, keeping just one or two for myself, so they all need going through and sorting into piles and then go into envelopes and then I have to look for addresses and write a note to go with the photos and write BEWARE - THE PAST IS INSIDE - on the back of the envelope and get stamps and...

The letters are easy - shove them in the box with the ones I had already here and don't look at them, although as it's beginning to look as though I might actually sign my will in the next few weeks the best thing to do with them would be to sort them out and have them all ready in big envelopes to be given back to the writers of them in the event of my death, but no need to get carried away here.

Postcards are easy as well, same method to use as with the letters. It's the five photo albums and the three shoeboxes full of photos I just dumped on the desk in the addition that are the challenge. How long is Mercury retrograde?

Venus Sextile Uranus

So no tennis because we thought the courts might be wet and the only thing to do was to watch Wimbledon - men's semifinal, Djokovich and Del Potro.

Exciting? Yes, a great game. Different? Yes, the other matches I watched this week were after the fact when I already knew the result, and I'm not usually given to lying on the couch watching television first thing in the morning. Beautiful? Well, Del Potro is definitely a hunk but he'd be Mars, wouldn't he? And nobody was shelling out moolah for me to lie there supine.

Four and a half hours later, still watching Djokovich and Del Potro, I roused myself enough to check email on the MBA and found a reservation request on airbnb for a room that night, pardon the product placement.

I'm supposed to have a two-night minimum and I suppose now I should add "24-hour notice please," but $63 is $63 and if it proves yet again that astrology is *real*, who am I to argue?

Sun Conjunct North Node....

...which in my case is in Cancer in the Third House. Start with playing tennis at 7:15, losing all three sets (as always), McDonald's for breakfast (bacon, egg and cheese biscuit), back to the house and work outside for four hours on *landscaping*, lie down on couch to read The New Yorker (this way yesterday, The Glorious Fourth), almost fall asleep, woken up by phone thank God, shower and drive to D's for dinner.

Stop at Snappy Mart to pick up beer, step outside, almighty clap of thunder and monsoon rain begins, get in car, reverse out of parking lot into petrol pump so driver's side mirror shifts 90 degrees, realize what have done, go back to parking space, attempt to move mirror from inside car, get wet, close window, sit for ten minutes wondering what damage have done to car body, attempt again to move mirror, successful but soaking wet, decide to drive home and pass on dinner invite.

Drive very slowly in pouring rain back up Little Walnut, rain stops, now driving on dry roads, change mind, drive to house where invited for dinner, eat wonderful dinner with four different items of food on plate at same time, extremely rare. Damage to car body minimal.

Drive home very slowly and go to bed immediately to prevent further mishaps.

Saturn Trine Saturn

So according to Michael Lutin, who as far as I know has never been wrong, Saturn's current "stopped motion in Scorpio provides a rare opportunity for choice to rediscover purpose and creativity and a reason to keep plugging away at turning the great wheel, and to make this transition with love."

What transition, I ask? The transition to actually being purposeful and creative? God knows that would be a transition for me, Miss Been-Saying-For-Twelve-Years-I'm-Going-To-Get-This-House-Organized and right now wondering what I'm going to do with the three boxes of paper *ephemera* I mailed out to myself - more precisely, where I'm going to put it all as I'm in the process of turning what used to be the computer room into a bedroom for myself so I don't have to sleep in the dining room when I have B&B people and be all perky and dressed and bed made by 7:00 am in case they wake up and want to know how to get to the Cliff Dwellings..

Once you've done it, you won't have to do it again I keep telling myself: this last influx of *stuff* leaves an empty storage locker on the East Coast, and even though a few pieces of decent furniture have been farmed out there, the chances of them ever making it out here are minimal and nothing to concern myself with unless and until they get here.

The two big boxes of photos from the past five decades post more of a problem. I started to go through them in Cambridge and realized the thing to do was to send the ones depicting people I still know directly to them and hope they didn't go into cardiac arrest or a deep depression at the unexpected sight of themselves twenty or thirty years ago.

This led to a couple of nights of sitting in an armchair with little piles of photographs all around me on the floor, each intended to go to a specific person, but then there was a birthday party and then we went out for dinner and my flight was for 5:45 am and all the little piles went into one box for me to sort out in my spare time here ha ha.

The point of all this - if I may be so bold - is that this station of Saturn directly trines the natal placement of Saturn for me, and was exact at 7:00 am this morning. At 7:00 am this morning I was on the tennis court warming up and about to lost all three sets we played to my partner, but that's par for the course. What's different is that I have spent the past few days and intend to spend many of the coming ones trying to clear my desk so I can downsize to a smaller one so I can swap out the day bed for a full sized one AND - O wonder of wonders, spent a lot of yesterday online searching out submission opportunities for the plays I've written.

It's probably a couple of years (!) since I've done this, turning the great wheel, as it were, and I would really like to go on with it. (All I've done so far is make notes on which theater companies don't require you to live in a specific state, be in a specific age range or write something on a given topic, allow submissions on Tuesdays and don't charge a fee. What comes next is checking on email or hard copy, bio needed or not, synopsis needed or not, playwright's name on manuscript or not, how many copies, what you have to be wearing when you submit etc. etc.)

And evidently I'm supposed to do it with love.

You are so on the brink, it's completely exciting. Of course a lot of it has already been written,
but not necessarly all, so it's up to you now, at least in part to decide which brink you're on

ou are so on the brink, it's completely exciting. Of course a lot of it has already been written,
but not necessarly all, so it's up to you now, at least in part to decide which brink 
It's cosmically fortunate that Jupiter has entered Cancer precisely at this momentous point in space-time.
You need every bit of help from the Universe you can get.
Saturn's stopped motion in Scorpio provides a rare opportunity for choice
to rediscover purpose and creativity and a reason to keep plugging awat at turning the Great Wheel,
and to make this transition with love.